Chinese Web Users Demonstrate Their Strength

Chinese web users are claiming a temporary victory against censorship after taking up the case of a young woman accused of murdering a local official who she says tried to force himself on her.

In what has rapidly become the hottest topic on the Internet, chatroom users and blogs have lionised 22-year-old Deng Yuqiao as a heroine for fighting back against what they say is China’s over-bearing and corrupt bureaucracy.

In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the web, which is much less rigorously controlled than traditional media, has been abuzz with a different David and Goliath tale.